LOCAL authorities have been told that they can build or buy more than 3,500 houses for public housing under this year's programme.
The houses have been allocated to the local authorities under the Department of the Environment scheme. The figure rises to 3,950 when some of the allocation from 1995 is carried over.
The Department said in a statement the need for local authority housing had stabilised since the last assessment in 1993. It claimed that this allocation, along with voluntary housing schemes and vacancies in existing houses, would mean that 10,000 households will be catered for this year.
"This compares with about 9,500 in 1995, and as few as 6,100 in 1992," it said. Local authorities are being urged to start work on the housing as quickly as possible and to take account of the 1996 assessment when deciding on the size and type of houses in the programme.
Outside Dublin the largest allocation is to Co Donegal, which gets 185 houses. Dublin County Borough has been allocated 500 houses. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council gets 170 and Fingal County Council gets 85.
"The local authority housing programme remains at the sustainable and satisfactory level to which it has been brought from the very low levels of the late 1980s and early 1990s," the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin said.